ALK and autoimmune disease: Some researchers believe that various factors, including trauma, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, surgery, viral infections, and abnormal expression or mutations of the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene, may contribute to the occurrence and development of IMT (Taiymi et al., 2023; Song & Zhu, 2021; Wang et al., 2023a; Wang et al., 2023b).